AADX is a 100% primary raise that exists to repair its own balance sheet. The company receives roughly $604.3 million in net proceeds — at the $20.00 IPO price — and directs nearly all of it to debt repayment ($548.2M to term loans, $56.1M to the revolver), taking a $1.02 billion debt load down by more than half. Sponsor Greenbriar keeps 81% control and sells zero shares. What public investors are buying is the de-lever — and a $1.06 billion defense and aerospace backlog priced into the recovery.
WHERE THIS DEAL STANDSApplied Aerospace & Defense, Inc. is trading, and Bellipo tracks it through lock-up.
RADAR Reported, nothing filed READY Terms on file, awaiting pricing PING Priced, not yet trading STRIKE The first trade crosses ORBIT Trading, through lock-upAADX priced on the NYSE at $20.00 on June 2 (first trade June 3) as a 100% primary offering — the company receives roughly $604.3M and uses essentially all of it to pay down $1B of debt. Greenbriar retains 81% control and sells zero shares.
A Bellipo Dossier is built from the filing itself. We aggregate the company's S-1 and its amendments, extract the disclosures that move a deal, and compile them into a single structured brief — the financial statements normalized into comparable lines, the use-of-proceeds split between primary and secondary, the capitalization and ownership table, the underwriting syndicate, insider selling, the auditor and its prior engagements, and the ranked risk factors. Every figure is traced to the source filing rather than the press release. The result is a desk-grade read of what the company disclosed, not what it announced — in plain English, in about five minutes.
Applied Aerospace & Defense is a vertically integrated provider of advanced design, engineering, and manufacturing for space and defense customers. It builds mission-critical subsystems across three verticals: Space and Launch Systems, Defense Aviation and Airborne Systems, and C5ISR and Precision Strike Systems. The current entity was formed in October 2022 when Greenbriar Equity Group acquired Applied Aerospace Structures Company (AASC), a Stockton, California operation founded in 1954, then combined it with PCX (Rotor Topco) on November 14, 2025. Three further acquisitions — ICEL (October 2024), NeXolve (March 2025), and CBI (March 2026) — round out the operating group.
Founded 2022 Headquarters Huntsville, Alabama CEO James William Ferguson, III Industry Aerospace & Defense Listing AADX · NYSE Website www.applied-ad.comAADX generates revenue from engineered, mission-critical subsystems sold into long-cycle U.S. government and prime-contractor programs across three market verticals — Space and Launch Systems, Defense Aviation and Airborne Systems, and C5ISR and Precision Strike. FY2025 revenue was $498.8M ($604.3M pro-forma) with $117.9M adjusted EBITDA. Greenbriar Equity Group remains the controlling stockholder with ~81% voting power post-offering, so AADX lists as a controlled company under NYSE rules.
This is a balance-sheet IPO, framed as a defense-and-space growth story. Both are real. AADX is a Greenbriar roll-up — Applied Aerospace Structures (founded 1954) combined with Rotor Topco, ICEL, NeXolve, and CBI between 2024 and 2026 — now bringing aggregated revenue, a $1.06 billion contract backlog, and a 23.6% adjusted EBITDA margin to market. The growth case is the defense and space mission-critical components business: subsystems for launch, defense aviation, and C5ISR programs. The caution case is everything that lives below operating income. AADX has posted a net loss in every period shown, and Q1 2026 swung to an operating loss of $2.8M from +$11.9M a year earlier — direction matters. Interest expense alone ate $72.8M in FY2025 against $58.9M of operating income, which is exactly why the de-lever IPO exists. A bulge-bracket-led ten-bank syndicate (Morgan Stanley lead) and a real backlog argue for institutional support; an 81% controlled-company structure, integration risk on a four-acquisition roll-up still being digested, and customer concentration in U.S. government contracts argue for caution on the public-holder experience. Read the leverage as carefully as the backlog.
Applied Aerospace & Defense is a premier provider of advanced design, engineering, and vertically integrated manufacturing solutions for space and defense customers. The company builds mission-critical subsystems across three market verticals: Space and Launch Systems (structures and components for orbital and suborbital programs); Defense Aviation and Airborne Systems (airframe and propulsion components for military aircraft); and C5ISR and Precision Strike Systems (subsystems supporting command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision-strike platforms). The current entity was formed in October 2022 when Greenbriar Equity Group acquired Applied Aerospace Structures Company (AASC), a Stockton, California operation founded in 1954. On November 14, 2025, AASC was combined with PCX (Rotor Topco) to form the current operating group. Three additional acquisitions have been integrated since: ICEL in October 2024, NeXolve in March 2025, and CBI in March 2026. Headquarters are in Huntsville, Alabama. James William Ferguson, III is Chief Executive Officer.
AADX received approximately $604.3 million in net proceeds at the $20.00 IPO price (approximately $696.4 million if the over-allotment is fully exercised). The company applied approximately $56.1 million to repay outstanding revolver borrowings and approximately $548.2 million to repay term loan principal — together, essentially the full net proceeds. Any remainder goes to general corporate purposes. This is a deleveraging IPO: the offering was sized to materially repair the balance sheet, not to fund operations or growth investments.
The remaining sections of this dossier are sent by email, free: confirm your email on the page to read them.